Call for Applicants: #Additivism Workshop

3D printing promises to become a widespread material language, allowing anything that can be stored as a digital template to be realised – just as long as one has the necessary materials. In The 3D Additivist Manifesto, Morehshin Allahyari and Daniel Rourke call creators and thinkers to action around this technology filled with hope and promise: the 3D printer. By considering 3D printing as a potential force for good, bad, or otherwise, they aim to disrupt binary thinking entirely, bringing together makers and thinkers invested in the idea of real, radical, change. Through their #Additivism project, Allahyari and Rourke set out to blur the boundaries between art, engineering, science fiction, and digital aesthetics with poetic, revolutionary gusto to forcefully question the contradictions of living under technocapitalism. They explore the promises of Additivist technologies through the metaphors of crude oil, plastic and desertification, and talk about the Anthropocene and Chthulucene; about forms of embodiment, alterity, and activism still waiting to be unleashed through acts of material creativity. #Additivism calls for artists, activists, designers, scientists, and critical engineers to accelerate the 3D printer and other Additivist technologies to their absolute limits and beyond, into the realm of the speculative, the provocative and the weird.
To get into the Additivism mood, watch the Additivism Manifesto. More information about Additivism can be found on www.additivism.org.
Workshop
The 2-day 3D Additivism workshop, which will take place immediately after the Sonic Acts Academy (29 February & 1 March), will be presented as an expanded lecture and as a workshop. During the workshop participants will be encouraged to reconsider the terms under which human-centric technologies affect the ongoing transformation of nature into ‘post-nature’, as well as the moral and philosophical implications of actively seeking to steer our technologies towards this end. Participants will be guided through the processes of additive design with the aim of producing speculative ‘post-natural’ objects for possible inclusion in the forthcoming 3D Additivist Cookbook. Questions such as: "How do we imagine structures of knowledge and action that exist outside or beyond human beings and our technologies?" and: "Is it possible to 'write' into, to ‘design’ alternate futures, without limiting what they (and we) might become?" will form a red threat.
Application
The workshop is open to artists, theorists, designers, engineers, scientists, thinkers, doers and makers who are interested in alternative approaches to theory-led forms of practice.
Participants are ideally filled with fears and enthusiasm for the future. To apply please send a short bio, a motivation why you would like to attend, and your expectations to workshop[at]sonicacts[dot]com. The deadline for application is 1 February 2016. Participants must attend the full programme. Late or incomplete applications will not be considered. If we receive more than ten applications, we will make a careful selection in consultation with Allahyari and Rourke. A detailed schedule and more information about how to prepare for the workshop will be sent to the selected participants.
Contribution
Participants will pay a contribution of €30. Lunches will be provided. Participants will receive reduced admission to the Sonic Acts Academy on 26–28 February 2016.